John wrote:
> I have a long notebook, which I intended to use in my class starting
> next week.
>
> Today the machine hung up, and I got the following message:
>
> There was a syntax error on line 14997 in the file temp1.nb
>
> nherited, {10,5}
>
> The highlighted error is a number in CellChangeTimes.
>
> Is it possible to discard the error by discarding the file from the
> highlighted error to the end of the file?
>
> John
>
The entire contents of a notebook is one large Mathematica expression.
Typically in a situation such as you describe, a notebook gets partially
written over an earlier version, so there is one broken bit.
One way to proceed is to take a copy of the original file, and edit it
with a text editor. It is usually possible to cut out one cell's worth
of data (hopefully an output cell!) and create a file that will load. It
may give a warning about the cache being corrupt, but you can ignore that.
If it loads, save it somewhere else, and invest in a good backup mechanism!
David Bailey
http://www.dbaileyconsultancy.co.uk